


modest with the jewels but check the bank

by brophigenia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Organized Crime, Anal Sex, Bathing/Washing, Domestic, Facials, Hand Jobs, Internalized Homophobia, Joseph Kavinsky Lives, M/M, Masturbation, Mob!K, Mob!Proko, Organized Crime, Prokopenko (Raven Cycle) Lives, Riding, listen it's glitterghost's birthday so that means it's time for the prokopinsky FILTH babez, proko watches the bachelorette with them and drinks boxed wine, showering together, some blood, tatyana and yelena are fabulous femme russian girlfriends, tatyana is a kickboxing instructor and yelena is an investment broker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 07:15:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19662433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: “Yeah, Prokopenko.P-R-O-K-O-P-E-N-K-O,”Ilya Prokopenko said into the cell phone he had clamped between his ear and shoulder, pinned, as he tossed ingredients into the fancy-ass blender that K’s kitchen had come stocked with and was never used unless Proko was over and making protein shakes for his post-workout cool downs. “Reservation for two. Somewhere private. Not on the patio.”(AKA, Proko just wants to do something nice for the sixth anniversary of K not dying on the Fourth of July; K just wants to do Proko.)





	modest with the jewels but check the bank

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glitterghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitterghost/gifts).



> Happy (early) birthday to my darling Glitterghost, my Ghostie with the mostie. <3 She asked for shower fic and I said 'OKURR.'

_stuck in the jet wash_

_bad trip I couldn’t get off._

_maybe I bit off more than I can chew—_

_overhead of the aqua blue._

_***_

“Yeah, Prokopenko. _P-R-O-K-O-P-E-N-K-O_ ,” Ilya Prokopenko said into the cell phone he had clamped between his ear and shoulder, pinned, as he tossed ingredients into the fancy-ass blender that K’s kitchen had come stocked with and was never used unless Proko was over and making protein shakes for his post-workout cool downs. 

(So, every morning.) 

Today he was in a strawberry mood. Strawberries and passionfruit. Rosy, pink. Alive. “Reservation for two. Somewhere private. _Not_ on the patio.” 

“Is it a special occasion, Mr. Prokopenko?” The reservationist at Çka Ka Qellu asked, her tone all-business. “A birthday, perhaps?” 

Proko hummed. “An anniversary.” He decided upon, and hung up after a perfunctory _goodbye._

The blender screamed as he flipped the switch on it. The swarm of butterflies that had taken residence in his stomach sometime last week when he’d got the idea in the first place was churning, each flap of their delicate wings stirring up a gale-force tornado that made him vaguely nauseous. 

He heard K come down the stairs, clattering, groaning, muttering for him to _shut the damn blender off,_ like he did every morning. It was nine in the morning; Proko had already gone to the gym and back, running to get his cardio in, done a load of laundry, _and_ called K’s grandma to check in. 

K collapsed on the couch, groaning theatrically until Proko came to lower the shades. He’d been a skeletal teenager and grown into a gaunt young man, thin everywhere but _tall,_ as tall as Proko, though about fifty pounds lighter. Proko could barely coax him into eating most days, loading his food up with anything tasteless but bulking that he could come up with. 

“I got us reservations at Qellu for tonight,” Proko said, making his tone uninterested, casual. “Wear something nice.” 

K had gone very still, his hands still pressed over his eyes and his body still sprawled carelessly across the couch. 

“The fuck for?” K asked, and his tone was not casual. It was thunderous, the beginning of a storm darkening his features as he pulled his hands away from his face. Just-woken-up, but K was like an angry god in the way that he _always_ was ready to rage. 

“Do I have to have a reason?” Proko asked, still trying to maintain some levity. “Can’t I just wanna take you out?” It was the wrong thing to say and Proko knew it as soon as he’d gotten the last word out, watching K’s mouth twist up and his shoulders curl forward, stiff as a board. 

_“You_ don’t take _me_ out, Prokopenko.” K said, rolling to his feet. Despite his tenuity, he seemed to loom, taking up all the space in the room. There was a reason that K was king, why every Slav in two states curried his favor. “I’m not your fuckin _girlfriend.”_

(As a matter of point, Proko _had_ a girlfriend. Her name was Tatyana, she was an aspiring model, she lived in an apartment that Proko paid for, and they went out three times a week like clockwork, usually with K and _his_ girlfriend, a tall blonde named Yelena. The girls lived in the same building, in adjacent apartments, and were very… _close._ It was an arrangement that worked for everyone, more or less.)

“Really?” Proko snapped dryly, balling his hands into fists. “I hadn’t fucking _noticed,_ K, thank you for the _clarification.”_

K sneered. “Big fancy words from a goddamn _goon,_ huh, _Ilya?_ Get your fucking shit straight, cancel that _fucking_ reservation, and act like you’ve got one _single_ working braincell left, huh? Fuck!” He exploded, and batted a lamp from its perch on a nearby sofa table. 

Proko bared his teeth and strode back through the kitchen to snatch up his car keys and cell phone, jamming his bare feet into his sneakers and not bothering to grab the smoothie he’d left in the blender on his way out the front door, nor the sweat-soaked shirt he’d tossed over the back of a nearby chair. 

“Proko!” K shouted from the doorway, pissed and wanting to _fight._ “Get the fuck back here!” 

He flipped K the bird and got into his car, hissing and swearing at the stovetop heat of the leather seats against his bare skin, peeling out before the air conditioner had even had the time to blow cold air. 

It was going to be a long, hot day; he was tempted to hole up in his own apartment, or maybe go to Tatyana’s, swim in the rooftop pool and get drunk, fall asleep on her couch with his head in her lap and _The Bachelorette_ on her television. 

Work didn’t stop just because it was a holiday, though, or because he was pissed at K, and so Proko stopped off at his apartment long enough to put on some decent clothes before going out to survey his perimeter, check in with the shops under their protection racket, talk to the girls and boys who worked on Kavinsky-owned street corners. 

The end of the day saw him dropping off a thick stack of small bills with their accountant, a mousy cousin of K’s on his mother’s side who was content to hide out in the back room of a family-run strip club with a big-ass safe and half a dozen bodyguards packing Kalashnikovs all day, every day. 

Again he thought of going to Tatyana’s, or Yelena’s, or even some random bar. Get drunk enough not to care about the cancelled reservation, the gift he’d picked out burning a hole in his pocket, the way K had looked when he’d even _suggested_ going out. 

He thought of it, but Proko ended up driving the familiar route to K’s ridiculous Tony Montana house anyway, like he knew he would even as he left that morning in a fury. 

K was nowhere to be found on the first floor, but he had so many security cameras hooked up to his phone that Proko knew he was being watched. Paranoid motherfucker was probably sulking on one of the balconies, watching as Proko heeled off his shoes in the foyer and then went up the stairs, rubbing at his own lower back and cracking his neck. 

The master bedroom was, as ever, cavernous and cold. K’s decorator was a tall, chilly woman with oil-slick black hair and a permanently-pinched expression. She was responsible for all the marble columns and exotic statues and creeping sense of dread. 

The en-suite bathroom, in particular, was a void of a room, all black tile and black marble and black-tinted glass. 

He stood beneath the spray with his chin tucked up against his chest, breathing in the thick steam, until he heard the door creak open. K was naked when he opened up the shower curtain, slipping in and getting up under the spray of the water, too, pressing their bodies together chest-to-chest. 

“Kiss me,” K demanded, and looped his arms around Proko’s neck, looking up at him through eyelashes that were clumped together with water, spiky-wet. His mouth was tight, and so was the thin skin around his dark eyes. Upset. He had played the part of douchebag closet-case downstairs and was shaking it off now like an ill-fitting coat, shedding his skin under Proko’s gaze. 

Proko still stung somewhere deep in his chest, unhappy and embarrassed, but he’d never been one to deny K anything, much less this. 

The kiss he pressed to K’s mouth was sweet, closed-mouthed and tender. A loving sort of thing, devoid of _heat._ He’d been kissing K for… ten years. Since they’d been little more than children, K as greedy then as he was now. Since Proko had been properly _alive._ In his original body. Not this new one, which still felt _not his_ sometimes in the spare moments, moments where he felt like he might fall out of this skin, sink into the floor weightless and transparent and _thin._

“You’re so.” K bit out, tightening his grip on Proko, and pressed a kiss to the corner of Proko’s mouth and then his cheek, nuzzling there. _“Good.”_

It was comical; Proko laughed, if only at the absurdity of the notion. He’d curb-stomped a weeping Italian last week, one of Pancietti’s buttonmen, while K stood silent behind him, a grinning warden, hot to watch his dog tearing out throats. “You’re full of shit.” 

“Shut up,” K said, insistent, and with insistent hands pressed Proko against the tiled wall of their shower, kissing his mouth until Proko was shivering, opening up for K’s tongue. The kiss was warm, and tasted like mint and salt and Lemonhead candy. Better than any drug, including the dreamt-up ones that K had put on his tongue when he was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, content to trip up to heaven or down to hell at K’s discretion. K’s hands pressed on his shoulders, pushing him to his knees; Proko went down easy for it because he thought K would stretch out his lips, fill up his throat, knock the thoughts out of his head. The disappointment. The _anger._

(He was always so fucking _angry.)_

“Hold still,” K said above him, sounding both very far away and very close. Proko couldn’t keep his eyes open under the deluge of the rainfall showerhead’s stream and so he didn’t even try, closed his eyes and ducked his head, resting it against one of K’s jutting hipbones. Raising one hand, he cupped the other one, running his thumb along the ridge of bone and pale, paper-thin skin stretched tight overtop like a drum. K’s breath shuddered out of him. “I _said_ hold still,” he said, almost-mildly, but with an edge of steel that made Proko return his hand to his lap, tired of all of it. The game of it. The endless push-pull between _Loving K_ and _Obeying K._ There were two Prokopenkos— the one who loved nothing more than having blood in his teeth and K’s honor upheld by his fists… and the one who wanted nothing more than to just lay down somewhere still and quiet with K at his side, wordless and untroubled. 

K’s hands were in his hair then, and the scent of orange peels was in his nose. The fancy shampoo Skov had made K buy, the kind that came in a blue-and-silver metal bottle and cost approximately a hundred dollars for four ounces. K’s hands were unpracticed but not clumsy, and he worked Proko’s hair into a lather, scritching at his scalp with blunt fingernails cut to the quick. Jiang used to be the one to take care of K’s hands, at school. Cutting his nails, filing them, bandaging his always-split knuckles, working scentless lotion into his palms until K was groaning, head tipped back and shoulders lax. Proko had always been bitterly jealous of Jiang in those moments, sour in his gut. Jiang, who was mystery and stoicism and pride, someone K wanted to be around because of his _allure,_ not because he was an easy mark like Proko. 

K cupped a hand over his forehead to keep the soapy water from stinging into his eyes; Proko was achingly hard when he realized it, something golden blooming in his gut. He hardly noticed K conditioning his hair, went pliant as K hauled him to his feet again so he could scrub Proko over briskly, touches almost non-sexual for all that he was touching Proko everywhere, brusque like he was soaping himself up. Like Proko was just an extension of himself, and wasn’t that at least partly the truth? Proko, the dream severed from its dreamer. Alive once, and dead once, and now existing somewhere in-between. 

(Did that make him Lazarus? Or did it just make him _K’s?)_

K did not deign to dry him off, tossing one of his overly-plush towels at Proko’s face and going off bare-skinned in the direction of his bedroom. 

Proko, as a matter of course, followed. 

“Sit there,” K barked, indicating the headboard of his large bed with a jerk of his chin as he went to rummage in the nightstand for a tube of lube that he tossed onto the center of the bed, climbing up after it and settling on his haunches as he popped the cap. The stuff smelled like blackberries. It was a heady scent, clogging up Proko’s nose. He was too-warm from the shower still, but nothing could detract from _this._

K opened himself up with a kind of grimace that was more concentration than pain, though pain still lingered at the edges of the expression, in the furrow of his dark, thick eyebrows and the crease of his single dimple, an island of charm embedded into his left cheek. It wasn’t an easy thing; he’d never taken cock _easily,_ and never with any kind of frequency. Proko could only remember seeing Swan fuck K, actually— a couple times back at Aglionby, when K was too-high and needed it the way Skov _always_ needed it, high as a kite or sober as a judge. Swan had been patient and opened him up with a mouth on his cock and thick fingers pressing into where he was tighter than a virgin at church camp. K had choked when he’d slid in all the way, bottoming out, and simultaneously egged Swan on with a hand tangled in his curls and _wept,_ belly shivering, knees knocking spastically against Swan’s hips like they wanted to close and open up at the same time. A mess. He’d been a _mess._ But it had only been those few times, and he’d been a hellion in the days after, a vengeful god to erase the vulnerability from their memories. Furious and cruel. 

K certainly had never done _this,_ at least to Proko’s knowledge; he was always the type to either want to fuck Proko’s ass or just rut against each other or trade blowjobs— the latter with more frequency than the former. K’s approach to sex was very _no fuss, no muss._ Anal took a lot more _doing_ than anything else, and K got bored or distracted too easily for it, nineteen times out of twenty. 

K wasn’t bored or distracted now. Every line of him was taut with _concentration,_ and Proko could hardly breathe with wanting as he watched, keeping his hands down at his sides because it’s K’s show and always has been. He was a player, but K ran the whole damn thing. 

K deemed himself ready after just two slim fingers, crawling awkwardly up until he could arrange himself in Proko’s lap, straight-backed as a king with eyes downcast like a peasant begging for supplication. 

“K—“ Proko tried to say, but stopped at a glare of K’s black eyes, a wordless _shut the fuck up_ as effective as a backhand to the mouth might’ve been. K worked himself down onto Proko’s cock with a liberal smear of lube and his teeth pressed into his lower lip, hard enough that any moment Proko expected to see blood blooming there, staining his pearl-white teeth like roses on bone. 

“This,” K said, biting off each word like it pained him more than the cock he’d jammed inside of his underprepared body. “Is for you. _Only.”_ A gift of a thing, _this is for you,_ like all of K could be contained by _this._ All of him, because while he’d let Swan fuck him before he’d not been _this,_ willing and self-sacrificing and _offering._ K did nothing that he wasn’t good at, but he bit his lips raw and worked his hips clumsily in a rhythm approaching desperate. He did not look happy, only _determined._

Proko could not take it a second longer: his hands flew up to K’s hips, lifting with all the hard-won strength in his body until he wasn’t inside K anymore, rolling him onto his back and kissing him deep and desperate before he could utter a single curse. 

“I don’t need it,” he said fiercely, and wrapped a hand around K’s mostly-soft cock, jerking him just this side of too-dry, too-rough. “I don’t fuckin _need it,_ I would be here even if you didn’t touch me ever again, you fucking _douchebag.”_ K thrashed and _bit,_ but his legs wrapped around Proko’s hips and his fingernails dig into Proko’s shoulders, tugging him inexorably _closer._

“I’m not— I can’t be—“ K tried to say, gasping, furious, and Proko shoved three fingers into his mouth, grinning when K bit them hard enough to scrape the skin of his knuckles, bust open skin, free blood that smeared at the corner of his spread-wide lips. 

“I know,” he said, and stroked K’s tongue, jerking him harder still. “K, _Joey,_ I _know.”_

And he did. It was not for them to go sit down and pretend to be gentle people at some high class restaurant. It was not for them because they were killers and they were selfish things and they were _them,_ but they still had _this._

K came with a low, throaty groan, biting down _hard_ on Proko’s fingers and striping both their stomachs; Proko disentangled himself long enough to snatch up the box he’d thrown down earlier, the one he’d meant to take with them to dinner, to present to K like they were in some stupid Lifetime movie. Long, thin, black velvet with gold hinges. He opened it up and took out the necklace, letting it dangle from his fingers with its diamonds and rubies winking in the dying light streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“That for me?” K rasped, propped up on his elbows, looking indecent. Looking _obscene,_ swollen mouth and semen-laced skin. “I’ll look like the fuckin’ Whore of Babylon.” 

“You’ll look like you’re _mine.”_ Proko retorted, and came in close to put the necklace on K, not asking. “That’s what I want. That’s what you can do _for_ _me.”_

(There was a _K_ tattooed on his hand, a pair of eight-point stars on his knees, a dagger through his collarbones, a cross on his ring finger. All marks of his devotion to K, all signals of his willingness to kill and go to prison and _anything,_ if K asked.) 

K could stand _this._ The weight of these hard-earned jewels around his neck. It was the _least_ he could do. 

“Yeah,” K said, hoarse, and his eyes were dark as he brought one hand up to touch with just the tips of his fingers the necklace, tracing each ruby and diamond. Proko groaned at the sight, bit-off, and straddled K’s chest, pushing him flat on his back so he could jerk off onto the necklace, onto his throat, his _face._

“C’mon, Ilya,” K said, low, and watched him through the fringes of his sooty eyelashes, bringing both hands up to cup the backs of Proko’s thighs. “Do it.” He urged. 

Proko did, watching K close his eyes and just _take it,_ gone as lax as Proko had ever seen him in all the years he’d been K’s shadow. He went to get a washcloth, stumbling a little bit, clumsy with the afterglow, mopping K up and then joining him on the mattress, skin-to-skin. 

Outside, fireworks started to go off, near and quiet enough that Proko knew they were just the regular-grade shit that middle-aged dads of every tax bracket bought to set off in their manicured backyards to entertain their packs of sunburnt, waterlogged children, drunk on light beer and wearing _Crocs._

“Happy Fourth of July,” he mumbled, and went to sleep with his face buried in K’s neck, the chain making an imprint on his cheek. 

“Happy Fourth of July, Ilya.” K echoed, quiet, and fell asleep, too. 

***

_we woke up in the kitchen saying_

_“how the hell did this shit happen?”_

_oh baby, drunk in love_

_we be all night_

_***_  
  


**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


End file.
